Walldorff Brew Pub & Bistro offers good food and its own gold-medal brews

Press Photo/Dave RaczkowskiOwners are in the house: Mike and Susan Barnaart pause while getting ready for the day's business in their Walldorff Brew Pub & Bistro in Hastings.

Two copper brewing vessels, part of the apparatus of handcrafted ales, filled the storefront windows of the Walldorff Brew Pub & Bistro in Hastings, beckoning us inside. My husband, Rich, and I, joined by our neighbors, Kelly and Crosby Rechtin, were seated in a cozy booth framed by harbor lights.

It wasn't long before Rich had quenched his thirst with a sampler ($5) of four ales -- Bee Sting Honey Rye; Smokey and the Bandit, a German Rauch smoked malt; Amber Waves; and Leaves Are Falling, a brown porter that had aged for a year.

Press Photo/Dave RaczkowskiWalldorff meal: Smoked baby-back ribs and accompaniments are on the menu.

Crosby started with a 20-ounce pint of Bistro Blonde. On the menu, the handful of beers includes a tasting description and alcoholic content -- a good thing to know. The beers lived up to the expectation with the men. And for good reason -- in the World Expo of Beers Competition on Monday in Frankenmuth, the Walldorff Brew Pub & Bistro took home seven medals. Head Brewer Sam Sherwood's handcrafted ales received two golds, four silvers and a bronze and was runner-up for Best of Show among 365 entries from around the world.

The drinking made us hungry and we set about eating more food than four people should.

The balsamic grilled asparagus ($5.99) wrapped in paper-thin slices of prosciutto and served with melon slices made an excellent combination.

Alcohol: Brews four to five handcrafted ales, including Bistro Blonde, State Street Oatmeal Stout, Bee Sting Honey Rye and Amber Waves, with four rotating seasonal beers. A sampler of four costs $5; a pint (20 ounces) is $4; a half-pint (10 ounces) is $2.50; growlers are $11.

Call us: Know a great place to dine out? Call The Press Entertainment department at 222-5685, or e-mail weekend@grpress.com.

For the entree, we continued the fun, marveling at the food to be had at this bistro-brew pub -- bistro being the key word. Restaurateur-chef Mike Barnaart, a Thomas Keller fan, wanted to create a contemporary French bistro in which simple food headlines the night.

Using local, seasonal and sustainable products as much as possible, Barnaart coaxes excellence from prime raw materials.

"We don't buy anything off the back of a truck. We work our tails off to make everything fresh every day," said Barnaart, who opened the brew pub in 2006 with his wife, Susan.

Crosby's bistro steak ($19.99), a half-pound center-cut sirloin glinting with cracked spices and sea salt, then slathered with creamy butter, was grilled over hardwood until the rich, deep, beefy taste wafted throughout the brewpub. It was served with French fries -- thin, crisp, double-fried nibbles -- Barnaart's version of steak fries. Crosby found his steak quite tender and juicy.

Kelly, a pizza connoisseur, liked the looks of the Highway Robbery wood-fired pizza ($11.50.) Taken straight from Barnaart's kitchen stint at the Arcadia Brewing Company in Kalamazoo, the pizza starts with a layer of drunken bean sauce (Tex Mex sauce of beans simmered in stout) and barbecue sauce, rather than tomato-based sauce.

It's loaded with wood-grilled chicken, jalapenos, roasted onions, peppers and mozzarella. It was rich, substantial, fun and so marvelous Kelly shared it with all of us.

Rich's jagerrostbraten ($19.99), thin scallops of New York strip loin, wood-grilled and topped with an earthy bacon, onion and mushroom "Hunter sauce" was simply delicious.

The pub-style fish and chips ($11.99), Bistro Blonde beer-battered north Atlantic cod with homemade fries, appealed to me. When Rich and I lived in London during his sabbatical from teaching, Friday nights consisted of eating take-away fish 'n' chips and watching an episode of the British TV series "Inspector Morse."

The Walldorff has been known to serve fish and chips in newspaper, just as the Brits do. You can't go wrong with a golden crispy crust encasing a moist hot fish and French fries made from scratch.

Desserts also hit a home run with chocolate bourbon pecan pie, Key lime pie and "chocolate loving spoonful," a three-layer stack of dense chocolate, fudge and ganache. Sheila Iszler, a cake decorator for Moo-ville Creamery on the hormone-free farm Westvale-vu Dairy, near Nashville in Barry County, whips up these heavenly delights especially for Walldorff.